• My neighbor’s beautiful ceramic artworks, like magnified microbes.
  • The older man lifting a huge crucifix out of his trunk.
  • The speckled asparagus-y dogwood plants at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
  • The twisted rebar sticking out of the concrete fragments on the beach at Fort Sheridan.
  • The feeling that some writing about nature is somehow braggadocious, competitive, as if it says, “Aren’t my senses keen?” I won’t name names, partly because I worry I’m projecting that quality onto them!
  • The idea that great music feels like a liminal space — emotionally evocative, unique, palpable in its weirdness or its melancholy.